Jordan’s thoughts: I am inclined to trust these two teams know what they’re doing given that they appeared in last year’s championship. But who knows? I am Jordan and I sure as hell do not know.

In this deal, HLR seems to just be adding prospects in order to flip them after the season starts to one of the tanking teams. Yordan Alvarez could be awesome, or he could be AJ Reed in left field. Nate Pearson could be Noah Syndergaard, or he could blow his arm out. More likely, he shoots up prospect lists in 2018 and HLR trades him for profit. Or the Blue Jays announce that Pearson is being converted to a relief pitcher and HLR trades him to Hydra for all their good players. I’ve got to be perfectly honest. I am Jordan and since these players are prospects, I have never heard of them.

The best piece going to HLR in this deal might just be Freddy Galvis, who is not particularly good but shows up every day. These same things were once said about Andrelton Simmons and he is now a valuable fantasy commodity. As a True Grinder™, Galvis embodies what HLR is all about, minus the penchant for trolling. Maybe HLR will flip Freddy to one of the teams that don’t have an obvious resolution at SS going into the season, who could use the cheap, at-least-he-plays-every-day depth.

Also, why did HLR include the $9? Does he just hate Shohei Ohtani? It seems like that money would’ve been better served adding one of the many awesome available players at auction, like James Shields or Mitch Moreland.

For the defending points and league champion, well, what was the point of this? Castellanos is, like, the third best 3B on this roster? Maybe second best, since the new humidor in Arizona is guaranteed to turn Rake Lamb back into plain old Jake Lamb. At any rate, CAP has no real need for Castellanos and should’ve just saved the prospects for in-season, at which point they could be flipped to a tanker for an obvious need. Now that the payout structure has been changed unilaterally to reward the teams with the best farm systems (forgot to tell you guys this, sorry, telling you here and now, thanks!), trading off prospects seems especially odd.

Blake Rutherford is just whatever. He could be awesome (yay!), could be the next AJ Reed (sad!), or could just be the same guy as Yordan Alvarez (yawn!). He’s on some lists. He’s not on other lists. Lists are important and I am sure that CAP hopes one day, Rutherford is on them all. Again, this guy is a prospect, so I, Jordan, have never heard of him.

The strange part of this trade is the inclusion of $44 Addison Russell. He’s basically the same guy as Galvis — not super efficient but plays every day; reliable; boring — but costs $39 more. Why not just keep Galvis, CAP? Even with the $9, Russell is too expensive. Sure, Russell has some upside, but he’s just such a risky guy to go out and acquire and then keep. So weird.

Final thought: HLR is getting the most cost controlled players, therefore HLR wins the trade. Freddy Galvis is interesting. Addison Russell is expensive. Castellanos has a funny name. I am Jordan and I approve this trade review.

We Talk Fantasy Sports’ thoughts: Here is how this trade would look if it were a graph:

Andrew’s thoughts: This trade occurred on April 26 and immediately became a disaster for TBD.

Syndergaard was supposed to take the mound on the day this trade was processed, but that start got pushed to the next day. On the 27th, he was scratched from a start due to “biceps tendinitis.” Then, he started on Sunday, April 30. In that start, he promptly got knocked around by the Nationals — five hits and two walks in 1.1 IP — before injuring himself on a pitch to Bryce Harper. He came out of the game having scored -4.5 fantasy points. Turns out, he has a partial tear in his lat. He’ll be on the shelf for three months or so. Just horrible, horrible luck for TBD. Like… if Syndergaard misses the year, which seems well within the range of possible outcomes here, how do you keep him at $82 next year? Or if he comes back but is rusty and struggles, or re-injures himself, or displays any sign of long-term volatility, how do you not send him back to auction? It’s totally possible that TBD spent three very good prospects and two premium draft picks to get -4.5 fantasy points.

Hindsight here is 20/20 but man, this just sucks for TBD. Ultimately, because they dealt picks and prospects, their already very good team is mostly unaffected. But they’re now down a lot of trade chips.

Before the injury though, I thought this swap was okay for both squads. I would rather have healthy Syndergaard than all the stuff IL4W got, but I understand why, if your team isn’t scoring points and is sitting at the bottom of the standings, you’d do this. Pitchers are time bombs. Obviously. So Aaron and his cohorts at IL4W mitigated some risk, took on a bunch of young, cheap talent with upside, and gave themselves a few more paths to being good down the road. Even if only two of the five pieces they got become useful, they’ll be useful and cheap. But pitchers are also a big part of winning games in this league (especially in 2017 when all the pitchers stink) and Syndergaard has essentially been Clayton Kershaw Lite since last year. To me, Kershaw is the type of talent you empty the chambers for. Syndergaard is that same type of talent.

If I’m TBD, I pull this trigger too. Not now, of course. But at the time they did it. Clearly they couldn’t have predicted the injury. And yeah, they surrendered Corey Kluber and Dellin Bettances in the midst of a pennant race just last year for Moncada alone. But trade markets aren’t static and, again, that was a late season deal. You pay more earlier. Go look at last year’s trade log, you’ll see. I don’t have a huge problem with the seemingly faulty logic of trading an ace for a prospect, then later on trading that prospect plus a bunch of other prospects for a different ace. Stuff changes. I also think if you get the opportunity to land a transcendent talent and really want to take it, well, take it, even if it means forking over a bunch of your best lottery tickets.

As arguably the best team in the league with or without Syndergaard, I really like the killer instinct and the aggressiveness it takes to get a deal like this done. And hey, it’s conceivable that TBD gets Syndergaard and Madison Bumgarner back in time for the playoffs. I’d argue the potential of that is worth the same, if not more, than the potential that Moncada becomes a dirt cheap version of 2016 Jonathan Villar*.

* So… we realize Moncada’s clock started last year and so he’s in his $1 season, in which IL4W seems unlikely to compete, right? Next year he’s $3 minimum, more if his projections are good. Three bucks is nothing if he becomes 2016 Villar or even Anthony Rendon or whoever. But the point is, the two most valuable years of a player’s cost control status are the year they’re first promoted ($0) and their sophomore season ($1). IL4W is effectively getting zero tangible benefit from those two years from Moncada. If Moncada kills it for them in his $1 season, that’s cool and all, but IL4W still probably isn’t making headway as a team and the better his stats are this year, the better his projections will be next year, and the higher that salary will jump. This certainly isn’t a huge knock to Moncada’s future value, but is something to keep in mind, I think.

Speaking to Moncada specifically though, I do wonder just how amazing he can be here. He strikes out a ton, which I don’t think will matter, because when he makes contact it’s really, really good contact. But the stolen bases aren’t big factors in our scoring like they are in a 5×5 and if he’s whiffing more than 30% of the time against Triple-A pitchers, what happens when he steps into an American League with Sale, Verlander, Carrasco, Kluber, Darvish, Keuchel, etc? It’s not like he’ll get to tee off against Mike Fiers every day, y’know?

For IL4W though, I can speak from experience that the decision to start selling sucks. It means your team is poop emoji. But aside from the super lucky timing, I like that they recognized not just a poor win/loss record, but also a deep deficit in points, and went ahead and made that call early. By doing so, they didn’t have to compete with any other teams, could set their own market, and could come away with the assets they wanted. And I actually think they still have a decent roster and can win some weeks this year, even if their playoff odds aren’t particularly good.

In Line 4 The Win

And with great giant lightning bolts, the team wins their super hero, their Thor. Holy cow what a bid. I mean there’s probably cause for Thor costing $80, but holy Norse God he is still young and fresh. Here is the league’s token all upside team. It does not typically work for me, but if it works for IL4W. I am not certain I actually know anything.

Hitting – Alright

Kyle Schwarber could have been the steal of the draft for 2016. Being a qualified catcher playing every day in the outfield. However, at $52 you’re looking to see him be as good as we was last year for an entire season. It is clearly possible, he could be better, but IL4W paid for it. Anthony Rizzo at $75 seems like a great price to me. Is Starlin Castro back to for real now? Joc Pederson is an enigma much like Colby Rasmus. Should be awesome, but um something’s not right. Dustin Pedroia and David Wright offer yesterday’s stars as older staples that in a day to day shuffling, should offer higher floors. Freddie Freeman being hurt before the draft could have dropped him into value territory. There is just enough question marks over the whole stack that I settled on alright.

Pitching – Not Quite

Something is missing here. Noah Syndergaard is a tier 2 with tier 1 potential. Jose Quintana is a tier 2 that everyone wants to believe is a tier 4. Carlos Rodon getting paid $35 means he needs to be awesome soon. Matt Moore as your 4 is scary. The top half just isn’t good enough to get behind and the bottom half is even scarier. It clearly could work out, but I’m missing what that is to make this rotation great. Bullpen should be good though. Kenley Jansen and Mark Melancon should be reliable stable relievers, as they come anyway.

Depth – Very Good

There is a plethora of decent talent that can be flexible and move around on this roster. The hitting depth is great, but the pitching depth drags this down quite a bit. Jose Reyes is a huge question mark, but at $8, possibly $10 next year is an exciting gamble. Guys like Matt Duffy, Brett Lawrie and Billy Burns could all finish high enough to start by the end of the year. They all are a small hot streak from being good enough to flip for something even more interesting.

Why 2016 would be bad…

All of that upside could be egg on this teams face. Sure, it is exciting, the possibility of being right and awesome on young guys in a dynasty league is incredibly tempting. Just like a few other teams, this team is currently built for everything to go right, or its on to 2017.

Why 2016 would be good…

Well Syndergaard, Quintana and Rodon obviously blow away expectations. The hitters are good enough, as is, to carry. They need these pitchers to be at their friendliest projections. Rizzo and Freeman could battle each other out for National League Silver Slugger, Joc Pederson gets his head on straight. Lots of upside here, it’s all over.

Immediately within the first hour of the auction draft it was clear that value was not easy to find. Prices of players were not excruciatingly high or overspent. But, these prices were high enough to ensure that there was not large values at the top either. Shrewd drafting made Saturday’s event an interesting battle of attrition as the player pool continued to shrink. As the pool shrank there was a seemingly never ending pile of teams with money looming over each auction.

Immediately, it looks like the teams that left money on the table are the most hurt. 50% of the league, 8-teams spent 100% of their budget. Leaving zero dollars left on the table. Of the remaining teams:

In some cases that unspent auction money being left on the table is not terribly frightening. But, at the bottom of that list, I can only imagine the day after regret. Good fantasy baseball talent auctioned off in that $10-$20 range. Even if you did not need a particular player, at least that drafted player has value. These extra auction dollars left unspent, are lost. They have no value.

Moving on to the auction money that got spent. More importantly how that money got spent. We can see how efficient teams were compared to this setting of the FanGraphs Auction Calculator. Keep in mind this calculator does not factor in our dynasty format (the hidden and unknown value of opportunity cost for keeping guys), nor does it fully understand our relievers scoring. But, for this exercise, and based on the results of the draft, it was quite accurate.

What you see above is the chart of how each of the teams did. Teams with positive values, overspent according to the FanGraphs calculator and the teams with negative values found bargains. The rank is from 1 “most efficient” to 16 “least efficient”.

Now before you go and say well done and patting yourself on the back, this is removing a lot of context away from the story. I believe you are sitting in a great place if you were most efficient with value, and you spent all of your auction budget. My team The Foundation finds itself there, so take that bias for what it is worth.

If you did not spend all of your auction money and you were not efficient in how you spent the money either, well you may have some extra work to do. Maybe your projections and targets are valued differently than how FanGraphs did and if so you’re probably okay! FanGraphs and projections are wrong more often than not.

Going a step further, let us take a look at everyone’s “best value”. What you should see below is a table that has the FanGraphs calculator value, how much they were paid for in the auction, and then the difference.

The best value of the day was projections wonder-boy Wei-Yin Chen who was bought for $17, and had been projected to be worth $48. Chen’s transition to the National League, to the Marlins ballpark and being away from the American League East is likely positive.

Finally, we also have a look at each team’s “worst” value. Now, I must warn you. If you’re the kind of guy who’s into the hot young star and cannot stand to see them in any negative light, please look away.